Warm, charming and intoxicating are just few a words that could describe the music of Anglo–American quartet The Earlies. It’s fitting then to sit down with the band’s two English members in a cosy Salford pub, where the Guinness flows freely and an open fire crackles away in the corner.
Their 2004 debut album, ‘These Were The Earlies’, made small waves upon release and garnered high praise from all corners of the press, not to mention a small, yet devoted fan base.
Follow-up ‘The Enemy Chorus’ will be unveiled in late January, and sees the four-piece, backed by their army of musician friends, eschewing the alt-country-tinged sounds that featured so heavily on their first record in favour of harder, darker themes. It’s not a radical departure, however, as the key ingredients of their music – melody, structure and cohesion – remain in abundance. ‘The Enemy Chorus’ is a deeply satisfying album, managing to reward both the first-time listener and those wishing to absorb its contents over a longer period.
We’re not going to top the singles charts, or be on the cover of Hello!, and I can’t see MTV Cribs wanting to come and look around my house.
Christian Madden and Giles Hatton, responsible for keyboards and technical wizardry respectively, blend in amid the Saturday afternoon regulars in The Kings Arms, yet within the opening two minutes of conversation, display a wit, understanding and passion for music above and beyond your average professional drinker. Like a double act, they play off each other and veer off at tangents from time to time, covering topics from stag dos in York, Casino Royale vs The Bourne Identity, the merits of Battlestar Galactica over most sci-fi series, Italian cuisine (“what I had tasted like a melted welly” cries Christian) and The Muppets’ various cinematic outings. They reserve the most enthusiasm, as you might expect, for their own creation…
This second album then…
Giles: We started in January.
Christian: We started earlier than that. We went into the studio to finish it in January.
G: Yeah, course. We had all the bits. It was finally mastered in May.
C: I think it was June. It was in middle of World Cup, second round.
You recorded it in Chorlton in Manchester. Is that your own studio?
C: No, it’s not. We first booked it years ago, initially because they had a piano in there. We got on really well with the engineer, he ended up in the band and now we do everything in there. A lot of the production stuff as well.
G: We haven’t got a studio. It would be very nice if we had.
C: We’re actually very, very poor. We’ve got a computer each. And a microphone, and a cracked copy of Cubase, that’s about it.
It’s worth mentioning at this point Giles and Christian, hailing from Levenshulme and Burnley, record all their parts in England. Texan duo John Mark Lapham and Brandon Carr, however, commit all of their music to tape in America. The recordings are then sent, via email or conventional post, to one another to continue working with. The first album was recorded without Giles and Christian even meeting Brandon, who had been drafted in by 4AD and Warp records fanatic John Mark after they met in a record shop. “I’d never even spoken to the guy when the record was made,” says Giles. “John Mark reassured us we’d like him, and that was good enough really, and his vocals were great. We’ve met since, of course, and we do get on amazingly well. Me and Christian are probably more obvious friends to Brandon than JM is.”
But does it ever cause problems?
C: Not really. I mean, me and Giles live 30 or 40 miles away, so we don’t always work together. There are financial problems and complications, like the price of flights etc, but that’s about it.
G: Nothing creative. We’ve all got phones and really fast Internet connections with instant messenger and whatever. Like Christian said, even when JM was living over here we were all spread out. It’s not like we were The Monkees, living in the same house and jamming all day long.
How does the new album sound?
G: It’s a lot, lot darker.
C: Proggy as fuck is the way I’d describe it. Some are bordering on Krautrock, especially the first few on there.
G: Yeah, proggier, louder, rockier.
Does that reflect a change in the music you were listening to?
Both: Definitely.
C: I went prog nuts last year and dragged everyone down with me.
G: I never really stopped listening to the alt-country, I don’t think I ever will, but I got into the prog too.
We’re actually very, very poor. We’ve got a computer each. And a microphone, and a cracked copy of Cubase, that’s about it.
How did you go about writing this album?
C: Same as always. We just have bits of songs that bounce back and forward that sound shit until the very last second.
G: And it really does sound shit. When we went in with the stuff for the new album, we had two weeks booked and I was thinking ‘this is going to be fucking shit’, you know what I mean? It turned out well good though, so I’m quite happy to be wrong.
C: We had about 17 half-baked, minute-long ideas. Everyone’s elements were great, but because we do everything separately, there isn’t always the balance that you need. All the session musicians were amazing as well.
So what’s the difference between something that sounds shit but has the potential to come good, and something that sounds shit because it is shit?
G: We really don’t know. There have been one or two that we’ve gone right the way through with that we’ve realised were bad at the very last second.
C: There hasn’t been many we’ve had to throw away to be honest. Some have sounded rubbish, but we’ve turned them around. There was this one song we had though, and I know it’s the one Giles is thinking of, where we even sent it to the label, knowing full well it was shite. Afterward, we got a phone call off our A&R man Billy, who’d presented it to the record company, confirming our suspicions. We’d had a two or three-year run of pure gold up until that point. We were like a hit-making factory. (Several minutes of raucous laughter ensue.)
Who else did you work with?
C: Well, there are only four of us actually signed to the label, but I’d consider everybody else in the band too. Not many labels would sign 11 people.
How do you recreate such a complex sound when playing live?
C: Most of the people who play on the album are in the live band. The first time we did it took a lot of thinking about how we were going to do certain things, with sampling and MIDI files and that. This time, planning the live show has been a lot easier because we knew what we were doing.
G: Even with the first tour, it came together a lot easier than I thought it would.
C: We’re really looking forward to this next tour. (The band have a string of dates around Europe, starting in march.) I reckon the songs from ‘These Were The Earlies’ were so down tempo and pastoral that they didn’t make for a very dynamic live show. Some of those songs will be barely recognisable when we play them again; we’ve given them a testosterone boost.
G: We’ve always been keen not to have sequencers and laptops on stage to make things easy. We’d much rather have musicians up there.
How do you deal with comparisons to the likes of Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips?
C: We do get them, especially after the first album, but I think they’ll wear away when the new album comes out. We always hear those two bands mentioned, and even The Polyphonic Spree.
G: I think that one’s to do with how many people are on stage. The Flaming Lips is probably to do with Brandon’s voice which is similar, rather than the actual music. We weren’t listening to them at the time; they’re not a particular influence.
C: It did get annoying to read reviews that just said we were fans of The Flaming Lips. Anyone with a bit of intelligence should just realise we might have similar record collections and reference points, but we’re certainly not watching their next move or anything.
G: I must say, though, initially, those comparisons probably got a lot of people into us who would have otherwise never bothered. It can be helpful to compared to bands like Mercury Rev, and an honour as well I suppose.
C: You do get bored of hearing the same names bandied about, but I understand record buyers do need some point of reference. It’s better than being compared to Liberty X I suppose.
G: I don’t know, we might have sold a few more records that way.
What sort of level of success would you like or expect after ‘The Enemy Chorus’ comes out?
C: Seeing as we’ve already mentioned them, if we got as big as The Flaming Lips, we’d be really happy. We could never get any bigger than a band like that. We’re not going to top the singles charts, or be on the cover of Hello!, and I can’t see MTV Cribs wanting to come and look around my house.
G: I wouldn’t want ’em there anyway, my missus would go mad.
C: I think a more realistic aspiration would be to continue as we have been. We tapped into a certain level of success in the UK with the last album, and if we could find something proportionate to that around the world, or in Europe, we’d be happy. We sold 25,000 albums here, so I’d like to think we could sell more than that this time, plus, I don’t know, 10,000 copies in Germany too, and 12,000 in France.
G: I don’t think we make inaccessible music, so I don’t see why that isn’t possible.
C: We’ve had this with the record label, and they were concerned there were no singles on there. I suppose it doesn’t sound like anything that’s on the radio, but surely one of our songs could come on after The Kooks and before The Feeling? Listeners might welcome the break. Jo Whiley could play a song, and if the switchboard lit up, she could just pretend it was a joke.
As our conversation moves on through the advantages of licence fees, Alan Titchmarsh, the quality of Audi TV advertisements, Vashti Bunyan and toxic shock syndrome, we eventually dispense with the trivial and arrive back to The Earlies’ music.
In a world populated by soulless bands with hollow, watered-down sentiment and hairstyles more interesting than their songs, you may also reach the same conclusion.
